


Sometimes We Have No Choice

by JoansGlove



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Resentment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-20 19:00:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13723995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoansGlove/pseuds/JoansGlove
Summary: We may think that we are capable of making our own choices, but what if they are forced on us by circumstance, what if we make them for the wrong reasons? What if they come back to haunt us...?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time in its creation but here it is, possibly the last J&V fic to emerge from the house of Glove.
> 
> Imagining that S5 never happened, this is a totally AU sister piece to 'From The Bitter Ashes', following on from Joan's exoneration and anticipating her imminenT return to Wentworth. 
> 
> With HUGE thanks to Duchess for her input and guidance - mate, it's been like old times again! =D xx

Vera's heart stopped mid-beat as the tall figure filled the doorway. “Hello, Vera. Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She had been so sure that the knock on the door was Jake realising he’d forgotten his house keys again – there they were in the bowl by the door – that she hadn’t bothered to put her robe on. She stood in the open doorway in fluffy socks and a saggy, faded T-shirt, conscious that it barely covered her modesty as the early morning sunlight warmed her bare legs. Sweeping her hardening gaze over familiar features, she demanded irritably, “what do you want, Joan?”

 

Joan swept past Vera into the hallway. Her sharp eyes appraised Vera's new home; mediocre in the extreme she thought to herself as she unbelted her tan leather trench coat and strode purposefully into the lounge. Draping the soft hide over one of the surprisingly stylish new wingback chairs Joan lowered herself into the other and sat like a queen as Vera perched tensely on the arm of the sofa.

Vera was so pissed off with Joan's imperious manner that she didn’t care when the hem of the tatty T-shirt rode up – let her see what she’s missing she thought bitterly to herself.

 

Joan's supple boots and wrap-around skirt were the same ones she’d worn to the lingerie store on the day she’d taken her underwear shopping, but this time her blouse was sinfully sheer, the delicate, gauzy lace of her bra clearly visible through the expensive silk. Joan’s nipples were soft pink smudges behind their insubstantial coverings and, in spite of herself, Vera eyed them with wary interest. Even now the damned woman still caused her to feel a tug of animal attraction deep in her lower belly.

 

“What do you want, Joan?” asked Vera again. “What are you doing here?” Joan Ferguson was the last person she ever wanted to see again. _Ever!_ The woman had almost ruined her! And how did she know where she lived now?

“Oh, just an old friend dropping by. It does happen, you know. Even to you.” Joan smiled warmly, enjoying Vera’s pinched expression. Vera looked tired. Defeated. And so she should, thought Joan. Vera had clambered up on the back of her high horse and had then had the temerity to pass judgement on her – Joan Ferguson. She had placed her faith in all the wrong people and now she was paying the price for her ill-conceived machinations.

They sat in silence for some time; Joan was evidently trying to psych her out but Vera refused to let herself be intimidated by the woman’s cool stare or her micro-smirks and gentle snorts of what was, knowing Joan as she did, most likely derision and arranged her features into the best poker face she had.

 

Eventually Vera grew bored with the charade of civility. “So, go on then. Start behaving like an old friend,” she challenged with more than a trace of antagonism.

Joan casually adjusted the hem of her skirt then turned her mocking gaze to Vera, “maybe I was too generous there. It should have been otherwise, of course, but circumstance conspired against us, didn’t it?” Her eyes fell to the partially exposed shadow at the top of Vera's thighs, noting with a quirk of a perfectly shaped brow a distinct lack of underwear, before rising once more to meet Vera's.

 

“Oh, oh circumstance was it?” Vera was stunned by the woman’s arrogance. “I don’t think that you can put it all down to circumstance, Joan, do you? You had quite a large part to play in it.” She could feel helpless anger welling up inside and took a deep breath to steady herself against the old pain.

“You weren’t wholly blameless yourself, Vera.”  

The nerve of the woman! Vera swallowed against the tight ball of fury that filled her throat, “I’m making tea,” she announced abruptly and left Joan to her games. Her exit was accompanied by a snicker from the infuriating woman, and she had to force herself not react and give Joan and ounce of satisfaction.

 

Gripping the counter, Vera ran through a couple of coping mantras that Bridget had given her and began to feel better. She chose Earl Grey for the sole reason that Joan hated it. And she hated Joan. Hated her lies, her arrogance, her ruthlessness. She hated Joan for her cold heart. She hated the fact that it still ripped at her insides when she thought back to how Joan had unceremoniously dumped her, and she doubly hated the fact that not even a new love could quell those feelings of loss.


	2. Chapter 2

Her T-shirt gaped at the neck as she banged the mug down in front of Joan and she knew that her tits would be clearly visible as she bent forward. The knowledge that Joan would be staring at them made her clit tighten ever so slightly.

 

Getting a grip of herself, Vera returned to the sofa and sat down at the far end. “I’ll ask you again, Joan, why are you here?”  


Joan's dark eyes slowly swept Vera's small frame. “I told you,” she said mildly, “just being sociable.”

“That’s a lie and we both know it.” Joan graced her with a wry smile and then slowly turned her handsome face towards the window, leaving Vera feeling frustrated and irrelevant. She wasn’t about to let Joan get away with it though, this was her house and they’d play by her rules.

“You obviously have something to say, Joan, so why don’t you do it before your tea gets cold, and then you can go?”

Joan eyed her mug with distaste. The garish lettering on the side proclaimed that it belonged to The World’s Best Boyfriend. Her eyebrow lifted at the obvious fallacy of the statement.

 

Joan did have something to say. She had done a lot of thinking in the aftermath of her breakdown but with Maggie's support she had come to a decision that should suit them both - if Vera was agreeable. However, before she got to that, she felt the necessary (but highly uncharacteristic) need to explain…

It felt odd though, to be alone with Vera again outside of Wentworth, especially given how the power dynamic between them had shifted and twisted and blurred; but she was back in control now, confidently back in charge. Whatever she’d felt for her ex-Deputy was water under the bridge now, just another of life’s teachings… But one she’d learned well.

 

Coolly, she settled her gaze on Vera and began. “We are all travellers on the path of life,” she stated. “We are free to take any route we choose because, ultimately, the destination is the same for us all – the cold embrace of the grave. We all have to pay the ferryman.”

Vera looked at Joan blankly. “Who?” she asked without interest.

“Charon, who transports souls across the river Styx for their deeds to be measured?” explained Joan. Really, she thought to herself, Vera's education was sadly lacking in the basics…

“Don’t you ever get bored of talking like an encyclopaedia?” asked Vera tartly.

“Don’t you ever get bored hustling along with all the other know-nothing shit-kickers? Trying to get ahead? Always finding somebody in your way? Losing yourself in the morass? How dismal it must be for you.”

 

Joan leaned fractionally towards Vera, “I offered you a different track, one that is trodden by those brave enough to negotiate the hurdles and pitfalls that litter its course. Nothing worth having was ever won easily, Vera, nothing!” Her black eyes shone with earnest belief.

“And what about this path that you’ve chosen?” Vera sneered. “Is it called Psychopath Boulevard?” She congratulated herself when she saw that the barb had hit home, making Joan stiffen.

Masking her irritation, Joan inhaled sharply through her nose. “Very quick, Vera. Almost amusing,” she smiled disarmingly. “But I can see that you still refuse to believe that I’m no different to anybody else.” Vera knew that there were plenty of people like Joan but she’d be damned if she was going to play along and argue with her – she could think what she bloody well liked. Leaning back, Joan scanned Vera's tight expression, “I’m right aren’t I? You don’t believe that I have the same needs as you? You think because I take a different approach to meeting them compared to the people you know, or have read about, that I am somehow twisted. But I’m not. I only seek to create stability and order in this cess pit of a world. I want what is right to prevail.”

 

Vera gave a curt harrumph and crossed her arms, a look of disbelief hardening her small face. She knew Joan clung to this creed but she’d never been able to bring herself to believe in this quasi-fascist “stability and order” bullshit, not when it meant lowering yourself to the same level (or worse) as the people you were meant to be stopping.

 

“Yes, I admit, the route I’ve chosen requires some careful negotiation; but it keeps me sharp, alert, ready to meet challenges and emerge with an enhanced understanding. I’m not afraid to wield my hypothetical sword to clear obstacles. And sometimes those paths have scary bridges or narrow tracks above chasms or gorges, and sometimes trolls live under those bridges, even worse. Sometimes you can’t pass without payment… and not everyone can meet the cost. But we all have to pay at some point, Vera, the only questions are ‘when’ and ‘can I afford it’?”

Vera snorted. “Trolls!” she exclaimed sarcastically.

“What, you don’t think that Channing’s a troll? You know I’m right, and you’ve only seen a fraction of what he truly is. And your mother,” Joan paused as Vera's eyes widened, “wouldn’t you describe her as a troll? What did it cost you to cross that final bridge, Vera, hmmm? Not as much as you thought it would, I suspect…”

Ignoring Vera's dirty look, Joan continued, “I take control. It’s a not choice for me you know, I can’t let others dictate my life so I don’t. I won’t. I wanted you to take control as well, Vera, to find the strength to support me. Support _us_. But mostly so that you could know yourself. I showed you the map but you didn’t have the desire to read it.”

 

Vera wasn’t going to tolerate this! How wonderful she’d thought Joan was. She had the same firm drive that Meg Jackson had possessed but unlike Meg, Joan had seen that all she needed was a chance to prove herself and had offered her support and guidance. She had been so incredibly flattered that Joan had chosen her to be her protégée - and her lover - that she would have done anything that Joan asked. She blushed with shame at how she had damned Will in her quest for Joan's approval. But during that brief period she’d felt amazing! As soon as she began to see results from Joan's guidance she’d put aside all of her niggling little worries and embraced her new life with gusto.

 

Standing up slowly, Vera crossed the room and stood over Joan. “I would have followed you anywhere, Joan,” she said in a tight voice and pointed a bony finger at her chest, “everything I did was for you. I was bowled over by you, in total awe of you, and you knew that and took advantage of me. I’d never met anyone like you before, and I hope that I never will again!”

“Oh, not this again, Vera,” complained Joan and rolled her eyes wearily, “you know that you did nothing for me that that didn’t suit you own ambitions also.”

Vera brought her hands to her hips and she grimaced at the ceiling in disbelief before bending down to sneer into Joan's face. “Let’s turn that statement back on you, shall we? You did nothing for me that didn’t further your interests either.” Joan said nothing, she merely looked bored, and Vera bit her cheek as she tried to keep her emotions in check. “So, go on then, tell me what you did for me that you didn’t benefit from…”

“Ha!” Joan was incredulous, her look of boredom changed instantly to one of wounded amazement. “Really? You’re asking me that? The woman who submitted that _damning_ report to the Board? The woman who testified against me? The mouse that finally found the courage to act on her convictions? The woman that finally managed to act like a Governor? I gave you self-belief, Vera, and look where it got me.”

 

Joan rose fluidly from her seat and stared down into Vera's surprised face. A spiteful smile played on her plush lips, “but you’ll note that I say ‘act’ – because you really aren’t Governor material are you, Vera? I admit that I was wrong to believe that you ever were.” Pure malice danced in her eyes and her smile widened as Vera's expression darkened with fury.

SLAP! Vera's hand shot out and caught Joan a resounding blow across her left cheek. Joan’s head rocked back and then, with a look of disbelief that slid quickly into one of anger, her lips thinned and her palm connected solidly with Vera's flushed face. Vera hit her again and Joan replied in kind. She would have easily knocked Vera to the floor had she chosen to, but she wanted to keep Vera conscious; leaving her with a concussion would be neither a good look, nor an appropriate conclusion to this morning’s business.

 

Breathing hard, they eyed each other warily, suddenly hard nipples tenting the fabric of their clothing. “Is this the part where we fuck, Vera?” taunted Joan viciously, closing the space between them until she could feel the warmth of Vera's unsteady breath through the gauze of her blouse. “What is it called again, make up sex?”

“I’m not going to fuck you, Joan!” Vera panted and shoved the obnoxious woman away from her. “There’s nothing about you that would ever make me want to fuck you ever again!” Part of her regretted hitting Joan - she knew that she’d lost ground in the argument and had made herself look foolish, but another part of her thrilled at how good it had felt to release that primal urge.

“Oh, Vera, I’m crushed!” she mocked and brought her hand to her damaged cheek in feigned despair.

 

In that moment, Vera was transported back to when she was eight years old. To the day that her classmates had crowded around her and jeered when she had found the courage to shout through her tears that she hadn’t wanted to play their silly game anyway! All of her futile anger came spewing out. “I hate you. I hate you so much!” she yelled. Blood oozed from her lower lip and she probed at the swelling cut with her tongue as she glared at her erstwhile mentor. She could feel a vein in her temple throbbing as she glared balefully at her tormentor.

Joan smiled grimly, displaying teeth tinted with her own blood. “Surely, it’s me that should be saying that, Vera, considering what you did to me. How is it that you hate me yet you don’t hate the Women, hmm? For so many years they’ve seen you as little more than a joke, a pushover. And then they infect you with Hepatitis C. How can you live with that and not hate them too?”

 

Vera's head tilted back and she fixed Joan with an icy stare. “You have absolutely no idea how I feel, Joan - about anything, or anyone. It’s your fault that we had the riot in the first place. It’s your fault that I was infected. If you hadn’t stripped the women of everything they had they wouldn’t have done it. And I wouldn’t be stuck with this bastard of a disease!”

 

Joan sat down and reached for her mug. She grimaced at the tepid muck that Vera had ungraciously served her as she rinsed the blood from her mouth and swallowed. Crossing her slim legs, Joan settled back into her chair and raised her angular face to watch Vera as she stood with fists clenched, and she offered the small woman a bitter-sweet smile. “I was so pleased when VinegarTits arrived on the scene, you know? You enjoyed the feeling, that sense of power that came with the prisoners’ respect, didn’t you? That sense of satisfaction knowing that you had control? It was so satisfying to watch you achieve that. But you threw it all away the minute you tried to be their friend again, when you entreated their good behaviour in exchange for ‘presents’.” Pah! she scoffed, “always wanting to be their friend, it’s fatal Vera. I’m getting tired of saying it.”

“Then don’t!” Vera snapped acidly. “Anyway, they’re not presents as well you know. Those programmes work.”

“Only for those with something to lose,” replied Joan smoothly. “They didn’t work too well on Smith, did they?”

 

Vera refused to be drawn by her sarcasm. “And they’re not animals either, Joan. I can’t hate a few and not the rest.”

“And yet you hate me, don’t you, Vera. You hated me enough to have me suspended, arrested and incarcerated. You set me up to be murdered. You did everything in your power to see that I suffered, you treated _me_ like an animal.”

“Aw, poor Joan,” Vera mocked.

“You're denying it?”

“Maybe it’s because you acted like one,” she spat in defence.

“You accused me of manipulation, of torture, of orchestrating a plot to cover up said torture. Those aren’t the actions of an animal.”

“No, they’re the actions of a psychopath! You're sick, Joan.”

 

“I am neither sick nor a psychopath!” Joan hissed, springing to her feet once more to tower over her ex-Deputy. Vera tensed but was determined to stand her ground. Hectic spots of colour stood out on Joan’s pale cheeks and her eyes flashed dangerously, “do you want to know what I am, Vera Bennett? Do you?” she demanded harshly, “well, I’ll tell you. I’m driven, I’m unexpected and I’m unsettling.” She took two slow steps forward, forcing Vera to break her resolve and retreat. “And I nearly always achieve what I set out to accomplish – you’d never find me needing to engineer a mini-riot with the Top Dog in order to prove my worth.” Vera's large blue eyes widened in shocked horror. “Oh yes, I know all about your part in Meg Jackson’s death, Vera.” Slater had spilled her guts, only too willing to tell Joan every dirty little secret her officers had in return for a stay in her execution. Joan had let her think she could buy her life with a few tawdry tales, she’d even smiled at her as she slipped the needle into the fat vein.

 

Vera tried to buy a bit of time. “You really shouldn’t believe everything you're told, Joan,” she blustered, cheeks flushing with the barefaced lie. “Anyway,” she countered, “if you’re so great and I’m so pathetic, why are you here, Joan? No-one else to boast to? Have you run out of friends to impress with your glittering career?”

 

Ignoring her, Joan took another two steps and Vera forced herself to stay still until Joan's menacing presence became just too much and she yielded once more, cursing her own weakness as she did so. “You did rather well out of her death didn’t you, Vera?” Joan's conversational tone was tinged with a sly mockery. “You’d still be bumbling along as her ineffectual Deputy if you’d never made that agreement with Holt. Of course, you failed at your first attempt to take over her role but nonetheless, you managed to dispose of her; you succeeded in deposing me… who else will fall as your ambition returns, hmm? Channing? – After all, he’s the man ultimately responsible for your current health status, isn’t he? I understand that he shouted loudest for your demotion too. It would be almost fitting. I could tell you how to do it, if you wanted…?”

 

Vera tried to turn the conversation (well, what was passing for one) away from herself. “What’s with the outfit then, Joan?” her eyes flickered over Joan's elegant figure and she adopted a look of scorn. “Did you think that you might seduce me? Drive me wild with longing? Or are you on your way to meet one of your women? Is Maggie back in town?”

Joan took a moment to inspect her own breasts then cocked her dark head and smiled thoughtfully. “Do you really need to be seduced Vera? Oh, I know what you just said, but that was in the heat of the moment.  Have you forgotten how good you felt with me?” Coquettishly, she wound a lock of raven-wing hair into a shining rope and her lips parted in a slow, sultry smile. “I haven’t forgotten about you…” she lied.

 

Her body prickled with a sudden rush of arousal as it remembered what Joan had done to her, and Vera swallowed drily. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But you needn’t think that you can show up here looking like that and draw me in again.”

“We’ll see…” replied Joan airily and briefly touched Vera’s chin with her scarred fingertips before turning and crossing to the window. Vera swallowed again, harder. In the morning glare Joan’s sheer blouse was rendered wholly transparent and it were as if she were naked from the waist up. The long curves of her body conjured images of an earlier time, a happier time, a time when everything was wrong yet seemed so right…she felt a wave of sadness flow over her anger.

 

“So, Vera, tell me, how’s life with Mr Stewart? I must say that I was a little surprised that you took up with him so quickly.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Please, Vera,” implored Joan, turning to gauge the effects of her words, “please, I wanna know. I wanna know that you are happy with your choice.”

Vera eyed Joan warily. Her initial instinct was to tell Ferguson to fuck off but the temptation to rub her face in their happiness was just too great. “Yeah, I’m happy, Joan. I’m happy with the way he tells me he loves me, how he doesn’t care that I have Hep C,” she ignored Joan's sniff of disapproval. “I’m even happier that, away from Wentworth, we're equals, he doesn’t make me feel stupid, or inferior; there are no games, no tests to pass ….”

Joan raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “And do you love him, Vera?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Like you loved me?”


	3. Chapter 3

Vera gaped momentarily and felt a deep blush race across her face. “I, I never said that I loved you, Joan!” she yelped. She hadn’t! She was sure that she hadn’t – she hadn’t wanted to risk Joan's reaction so she’d kept that monumental word to herself. 

“You didn’t need to, Vera. It was plain to see,” replied Joan smugly.

“Yeah, well, you never loved me back. You’re always so, so … so empty of emotion.”

“You accuse me of being heartless, soulless; but you of all people should know that’s untrue. And I’ve maintained a happy relationship with Maggie for more than thirty years – could a ‘psychopath’ accomplish that?”

 

“I know who Maggie is, Joan. I’ve asked around. This woman that you love – the woman that validates your ‘humanity’ – she’s little better than you are!”

Lifting her chin, Joan regarded Vera coldly through narrowed eyes. “Have you been listening to gossip and rumour again, Vera?”

“It’s hardly rumour…”

“Ah, but nothing has ever been proven. No-one with a record tainted by such malfeasance could ever make Governor.”

“She’s just never been caught.” Vera paused and gave a vindictive little smile, “unlike you.”

“Oh? And what did you catch me doing? Committing murder? Not once. Commissioning hits on people? I don’t think so. Managing to miraculously force an inmate to mutilate herself? Hardly. You most certainly didn’t catch me breaking the law, Vera. But you did witness me giving myself to the only person I can trust in this world.”

 

Trust. Joan made out that she was big on trust. And Vera had trusted her. Trusted her with her career, her body … and her heart, because she _had_ believed that Joan cared about her. But finding out that Joan had refused to open the gate during the riot had shaken her profoundly. The rational part of her knew that Joan's hard stance was probably the right one to take, even if she’d have ended up even more bruised and battered as Gambaro and her crew grew increasingly desperate, but another part of her firmly believed that Joan would have willingly surrendered her as a casualty of war had it been necessary – and she couldn’t accept that. Wearily, Vera crossed to the sofa and sank into the far corner. Clasping her hands together she massaged her knuckles and raised her head to face the infuriating woman.

 

“You had my trust Joan,” she said coldly, “all the way, until I found out how you were really treating me, using me. You let me think that it was you who ordered the gates to be opened. You let me think that you cared about me...”

“…Vera...”

“No, don’t interrupt me, Joan. I need to say this. This is _my_ home and I’m _going_ to say it…” she untangled her fingers and pointed at Joan, stabbing the air for emphasis, “and you need to fucking listen! And I mean _really_ listen. I thought that I had found someone who truly wanted the best for me. I allowed you to manipulate me, to humiliate me because, hell, you did it so beautifully well, so softly, so intimately – and why did I not see it earlier? Why couldn’t I see what everybody else could, eh? You want to know how, hmm? Because it was better than anything I’d ever known before and it felt magical!” Vera pressed her palm against her heaving breastbone and glared hotly at the tall brunette. “Do you know what that feeling is, Joan? To finally have your worth recognised and to be given the opportunity to be a better person? I thought that all my birthdays had come at once when you offered to mentor me! You made me feel like I actually mattered.  And I was so desperate to please you, Joan, sooo fucking scared that you’d realise your mistake, that I ignored all of my suspicions, pushed all my doubts about your methods away and accepted you one hundred percent. I thought that I loved you, Joan – how pathetic is that? Even now I’m not sure that I didn’t. And I even thought that you loved me…but it turned out that you were just like everyone else after all.” Her hand fell to her side and she found herself smiling bitterly at this absurd thought.

 

“And yes, I know your reasons for not giving in and opening the gates. I know that you were probably right, I know all of that,” she broke off and drew in a ragged breath as her chest hitched, “but it doesn’t make it hurt any less, Joan. But what really hurts the most, what kills me every time I think about it, is how you recoiled from me when I told you about the Hep C.  I was so scared to tell you. So scared of your rejection,” tears glittered in her blue eyes and she blinked hard against their sting, “I didn’t know which way to turn. I didn’t hide it from you on purpose, Joan, you have to believe me, I swear that I didn’t. And all I wanted was for you to hold me, to tell me that it would all be OK but you couldn’t, could you? When I needed you the most you weren’t there for me! I should have known that I wasn’t important to you. Not when you had Maggie! Not when you had Anderson!”

 

“Anderson?” Joan felt her heart still as a sickening chill flashed through her.

“Yeah, Doreen Anderson. You remember her don’t you, Joan? After all, you couldn’t stay away from her! What _was_ going on with Anderson? What does she have that I don’t? Tell me, Joan! Fucking tell me!”

Joan's face remained impassive but she felt every one of Vera's words. Doreen was a sensitive topic and not one she ever wished to discuss with someone like Vera. “I can assure you, I don’t know what you're talking about, Vera.” Joan glanced at the remains of her tea. What she wouldn’t give right now for a good strong cup of coffee…

“Don’t lie to me, Joan, just don’t do it! You’ve had a thing for her from your very first day. No, don’t deny it…” she held up her index finger to stay Joan's words as she opened her mouth to reply.

“I don’t follow…”

“You made a bee-line straight for her, abused her Peer Worker status, gave her the garden project and then pretty much ignored her when you found she was pregnant. Anyone would think that you were jealous because she…”

“…she what, Vera?” It was becoming harder to maintain her expressionless mask…

“Because she chose Nash Taylor over you…”

 

Tcha! Joan scoffed. “How preposterous, Vera, the prisoner was in disgrace.” Adopting an air of nonchalance to disguise her turbulent feelings, she pushed herself away from the windowsill and gracefully lowered herself into the chair, adjusting her outfit as Vera continued to bleat.

“Then you started being nice to her again. Beyond the call of duty nice.” It was almost a complaint. Vera took a deep breath to steady the quiver in her voice.

“She was vulnerable, Vera. I did what any good Governor would do.” Joan didn’t want to think about how vulnerable Anderson had made _her_ feel. Try as she might, she’d had no control over the unexpected and unsettling emotions Doreen had unleashed in her. She had even killed to maintain Doreen’s happiness…

“Yeah? There’s plenty of vulnerable women in Wentworth, Joan, and they don’t all get midnight ice cream from the Governor. It was more than that, Joan, and you know it as well as I do. You called her Jianna,” she said accusingly. Vera realised with a start just how jealous she’d been of Doreen, how confused by Joan’s behaviour.

 

Joan sniffed and stared up at the ceiling. She only remembered snatches of that night, even now after all this time. It seemed that she had been unaware of how easily she had confused memory with the present and it caused a flash of panic each time each time she wondered what she may have accidentally disclosed. “I was under a lot of pressure,” she muttered tersely. “I could have done with your support.” She lowered her eyes to Vera and fixed her with a steely stare.

 

 “I tried, Joan, remember? But you pulled the shutters down. Remember how you kicked me out of Medical when she went into labour? Remember how you almost broke my spine slamming me into the wall when Warner took Anderson’s baby? Even though I knew that you’d done some terrible things I still supported you like a good Deputy should. But I didn’t exist by that point did I, eh? You wouldn’t have accepted my help even if you’d been able to recognise it!”

She had found it so painfully frustrating to see how Joan softened around Doreen, and she had been secretly glad after the birth when Joan had inexplicably become glacial towards her once more. Until the night of the fire. When Joan had violently pushed her away and she witnessed the raw emotion on the face of the woman she loved, Vera had wanted to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

Joan didn’t like the direction their discussion was taking. Pushing Vera's litany of complaints aside she launched back into her speech. “I’ve always thought that trust is like the meniscus of a liquid, Vera.  Imagine a friendship, _if_ you can. Now imagine that the word ‘friendship’ is a glass and that all that goes into creating the meaning of friendship is a steady trickle of water. As the glass fills, so the rapport between the two parties grows until the glass is perfectly full, so full that by rights it should overflow but it doesn’t – no, the glass just gets bigger - and all the shared experiences are held by the invisible force of the meniscus, and perfect trust exists. Now, under the right circumstances this surface tension - this trust - can stay like that forever, it can withstand various pressures and influences, it can withstand being dented, but it is so easily pierced, and once it’s been torn it’s gone. There’s nothing to stop the water flowing away…

 

“But you didn’t just pierce the trust between us, did you? No, you knocked the glass over and then you smashed it for good measure! Those splinters flew out in all directions and one of them pierced my heart.” She paused to assess the incredulous expression crawling over Vera's flushed face. “Oh, yes, I know that you won’t believe me, you don’t have it in you to give someone like me the benefit of the doubt – after all, a monster like me can’t have feelings, can she?”

Vera laughed bitterly at the ceiling. She couldn’t decide which was worse: Joan spitting out her dummy or her utterly arrogant inability to take _any_ responsibility for her own actions.

 

Joan reached for her mug, tilting it to inspect the insipid contents before pushing it away with a look of distaste. “I thought that if I could get you to break free from the safety of meaningless moral codes that you could make a top-notch Governor. I needed a sound wing-man … wing- _woman_ ,” Joan corrected herself with a half-smile, “someone to help me field the constant attacks. Standing alone leaves you vulnerable, you should know that by now. You were alone too, Vera, none of the other officers could have been called loyal to you, none of them were your friends. I offered you belonging, Vera. I offered you trust, friendship… my bed.”

 

“Your bed, oh yes?” spluttered Vera hoarsely. “Hardly! Your friendship? Oh, no – let’s be real, Joan! No, as you rightly pointed out, friendship requires trust. I trusted you at the start, I still wanted to trust you when everyone was telling me I was wrong to. I should have listened to them! You didn’t want a partner – you wanted a lackey!”

“But I did trust you, Vera,” she insisted. “That’s why I gave you so much freedom – at work, at home,” Vera's eyes widened and she snorted derisively at the ridiculous notion that they had a home life. “You know what I meant, Vera! I trusted you to make the right decisions for the right reasons, and you were on your way, you were blossoming so beautifully, and then you were taken hostage and it began to change.”

“Agggh!” Vera slapped the sofa arm in frustration and rocked forward, glaring at her unwanted guest. “You pushed me away, remember? ‘Go and explore…’ you said, ‘make sure I’m what you want’ you told me. Well I did that, but it turned out that it was _you_ that didn’t want _me_ , didn’t it? Why can’t you just admit it?”

 

“When did I ever say that I did not want you?” Joan paused and weighed up the pros and cons of exposing herself to Vera, finally reaching the uneasy conclusion that to do so was a necessary evil. “Vera,” she said softly, “I wanted so much from you it was scary. And I had to make sure that you wouldn’t leave me, that you wouldn’t suddenly decide that you’d made a mistake, that your faith in me was misplaced and you realised that you couldn’t handle the level of intimacy I was offering.” Joan left her chair and sat down beside Vera, angling her body so that she could address Vera face to face. Her long fingers twined loosely in her lap as she searched Vera's hostile gaze for some flicker of understanding. “There was a time when I honestly thought we could have a future together, Vera.  Very few people have ever made me think like that.”

 

Joan flinched as Vera's hands flew into the air, “oh, oh really? You couldn’t have told me that earlier?” she demanded incredulously. “I mean, what the fuck’s wrong with you that you couldn’t have let me know?” she implored. “All I ever wanted from you was some affection and some security. Some recognition as a person and not just as your project. Just some fucking honesty!”

A mixture of confusion and annoyance clouded Joan's features. “But I tried to, Vera. Maggie did as well,” her face softened and she moved her hand towards Vera's, almost, but not quite, grazing her little finger with her own.  “I so desperately hoped that you wanted to learn to understand me, to accept me. But you let me down in the worst possible way, Vera. You underestimated the depth of my feeling, you chose to think of me as a cold-hearted bitch, callous and unfeeling. You chose to believe a prisoner over me.”

 

Vera stared at Joan's hand and then looked up into dark, imploring eyes. Even now, she felt that Joan was playing her, that this display of feeling was another of her games designed to torment her. Her lip curled in a snarl, “you're a liar, Joan! You might as well just shut up now ‘cause I don’t believe a fucking word you say anymore! This is just another one of your manipulative games!” She snatched her hand into her lap and edged away, not liking just how close they were.

A hardness slowly filled Joan's face and spread through her entire frame. “If I’m a liar, then you're a liar too. But you're a liar because you are weak. And I may be many things, Vera, but I’m not weak. What you regard as lies was a case of caution on my part. You must understand, Vera, I’ve been hurt in the past. Hurt badly, irreparably, and by the people I have been the closest to – the ones that I loved so much, the ones that I placed my trust in – so of course I was going to be cautious with someone who touched me as deeply you did; with a colleague – but I let you in, Vera, and I don’t do that. Not anymore. But, sadly, it transpired that I had good reason to be cautious, didn’t it, hmmm? You swore loyalty to me Vera and then you fucked me over.”

 

Joan tapped her temple with one long finger, “you see, you let Westfall get into your head…” She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow challenging a denial.

“She was concerned for me! More concerned than you’ve ever been!”

“No, she wasn’t. You poor, deluded fool, Vera! Can’t you see that all she ever wanted was for Doyle to make it out alive so that they could continue their affair uninterrupted? She didn’t want to be your _friend_! Why would she? Surely, you’re not stupid enough the think that any advice or support she gave you came from anything resembling altruism or solidarity? Westfall is nothing more than a third-rate quack.

 

“Look, Vera, some people only possess blunt instruments – and I’m talking both mentally as well as physically here – just look at Matthew Fletcher or Susan Jenkins, and some possess only sharp ones. You need both to succeed in this world. I enjoy using the blade; it’s so clean, the perfect tool to expose the corruption and excise malignancy.  Not all blades are used for killing you know, even if they are perfectly suited to the task. If you can wield one with enough finesse, you’ll find that you can reshape the ugly into something acceptable – perhaps even beautiful... But sometimes, only brute force will do to send an instant message.”

 

With a look of distaste, Vera stood and crossed to the window and gazed through the dusty pane. Outside, everything seemed as normal as ever – the sun sparkled on parked cars, its heat already making them shimmer like many-coloured scarabs; birds shouted and shrieked at each other high up in the trees and along the power lines, and far, far above, aeroplanes criss-crossed the sky as they followed their carefully regimented flight plans. But in here in this room she was struggling to find an anchor in the twisting tide of words that flowed between she and Joan.

 

“Bridget warned me that you’d been playing me,” she said dully, still watching the contrails lacing the blue sky together, “manipulating me, coercing me, but I refused to believe her. I thought that you were the best thing that had ever happened to me, Joan, I really did.”

“I am, Vera. The very best thing,” Joan drawled and smiled to herself when Vera's fingers tensed against the window sill.

Vera ignored Joan's loaded reply and continued. “She wasn’t wrong though, was she? The more I thought about what she said, the more I came to see what you’d been doing to me. What a monster you really were.”

“And all this thinking, Vera, did that happen before or after you accused me of never caring for you?”

“After, actually. It was the only thing that made any sense.”  

 

“Well, there we are then” murmured Joan as the truth of the matter was revealed. “We don’t always taste the first drop of poison, or the second, nor even the third. But soon, you find that there’s an unpleasant taste in your mouth and it won’t go away. Do you know, Vera, that I have an unpleasant taste in my mouth every time I think about what you did to me?”

Vera bristled. She felt brittle anger crackling in her skull and almost barked in sarcastic laughter as she whirled around to face her accuser. “That’s rich, Joan! Calling me a poisoner when it was _you_ that was poisoning _me_! The more I tasted of you and your vision for us both, the sicker I got. Thank god Bridget was there to spot the symptoms and stop the spread. And then, you sank your fangs into me didn't you? Pumped me full of your venom because I did what I should have done long ago, and yes, it stung and it burned, but it didn’t kill me like you thought it would, did it?  Maybe I’m immune to you now, Joan, maybe that’s why I can see you for what you are…” She eyed Joan speculatively. “Is that why you're here? To see why I didn’t die? After all, you’re not her to win me back, are you, eh? You made it abundantly clear that I’m too _diseased_ for your refined tastes…”

 

Unperturbed, Joan continued, “I often ask myself if you ever truly wanted me, Vera. I know that you wanted the power, the self-confidence, the future that I could offer you; but did you ever want me, with all my quirks and scary truths? I offered you development beyond your wildest dreams, I believed in you, Vera, I offered you my loyalty,” she paused for a moment and inspected her fingernails, “I gave you things that it hurt me to surrender, but I offered them to you anyway. And I did it all because I trusted that you wanted it, that you wanted me, because, because…”

“Because what, Joan?”

The dark-haired woman swore under her breath and puffed out her cheeks, “because I wanted you.” Joan levelled her gaze at Vera. “Foolish, wasn’t I?”

 

And it really had been foolish of her. She had stupidly let her inexplicable desire for Vera colour her judgement. She had pridefully believed that Vera’s flaws could be corrected. And it had cut her deeply to find out that Vera just didn’t have what it took to be the woman she needed. It would take her a long time to heal from that wound.


	5. Chapter 5

Even in the midst of her swirling anger, Vera realised that Joan had opened up more about her feelings in the last few minutes than she ever had when they were together. It was true, Maggie had explained some of Joan's hopes and fears, but Vera had needed to hear them from Joan and now… well, it was far too late now, no matter how desperately part of her wanted it to be true - that agonisingly tender part of her broken soul that refused to heal, that exhausted part of her that just wanted acceptance, that desperately lonely part of her that would still take Joan back if only she would ask her to -  but even with Joan telling her what she wanted to hear she realised that she could not find enough forgiveness in her heart so, no, it _was_ too late now for those words to ever mean anything. She gaped at her former lover and strode over to the sofa. Leaning over Joan she summoned all of her loathing, “you didn’t want me! There’s absolutely no way that you can ever make me believe that you did! Not now. Because I fucking well know now that it could never be true! You treated me like shit, Joan. You don’t do that to people you care for! It took me a while to discover the truth, but I’m glad I did.”

 

She swallowed hard against the bitter words that rose in her throat and straightened up. Joan evoked so much conflict and negativity in her that it threatened to come pouring out in a burning torrent that would leave her a broken shell of a woman. She knew that she couldn’t let Joan know how strongly she was still affected because, if she realised, then there’d be no stopping her. Vera would be without defences and totally at her mercy – if she actually had any, that is… 

 

Joan gave an exasperated groan as she sagged against the sofa’s back and raked her fingers through her hair. “And here we go again! This is still all because I didn’t open those fucking gates, isn’t it?” her eyes burned into Vera's. “All of it – every nasty, vindictive thing that you’ve done to me since then is because I tried to save you and you didn’t like the way I went about it! Do you wanna know what I really think, Vera? I think that you used me. You could never really believe that someone like me would want you to succeed but you ran with it because you just wanted to stop feeling like an ineffectual nobody.” It still rankled that she hadn’t seen it at the time, that she’d been duped into thinking that Vera had been hers for the taking.

 

“You, you tried to “save” me?” Vera spluttered incredulously. “I “used you”? Are you for real, Joan?” She paced the room, marshalling her thoughts. “You’re right about one thing, though. I couldn’t believe that someone like you would want to do all of those things for me, but not for the reason you think….and I was right all along wasn’t I? Once I started asking questions rather than just nodding like a ‘yes man’, you lost interest.”

 

Uncrossing her legs, Joan moved to the edge of the cushion and tilted her head back to stare up into Vera's scowl. Her lustrous hair fell back from her handsome features and, as she felt it slither over her shoulders, she gave a small, involuntary shudder. “Tell me, Vera, all of those times that we were together, who was it that you were really thinking of?” she parted her knees a little and was pleased to see how the small woman’s attention was suddenly diverted to the smooth skin of her inner thighs. “It hurts me to admit it, but going by both your current situation and your Florence Nightingale act, I suspect that it might have been Mr Fletcher.” Joan eyed Vera speculatively.

Her eyes flew back to Joan's. “How can you say that?” She may hate her now, but back then Joan was the most important thing in her life. She had taken all of Vera's focus, had conjured feelings in her that had outstripped anything she had known before… Stiff legged, she crossed to Joan's empty chair and sat down. How she wished that she could snap her fingers and make all of this go away! All of it. Just make Joan Ferguson never exist…

 

“Look at it from my side, Vera,” explained Joan conversationally. “You explicitly lied about seeing the man following his accident…”

“… Attempted murder,” Vera cut in.

“No, it was an accident, Vera.” Joan flapped her hand dismissively, “the fact remains that you lied to me about your relationship with him. I think that you lied to me about rather a lot. He’s working as a shearer now isn’t he? But then, he always was drawn to bleating sheep.” Joan looked pointedly at Vera and smiled inwardly at the look of pique that coloured her face. “Anyway, he was unstable, a negative influence on everything he touched, it happened for the greater good.”

“You were more than unstable yourself though, weren’t you, Joan? You were positively unhinged! Fletch said you were arguing with thin air!”

“As I said, I was under a lot of pressure. And Mister Fletcher’s vendetta against me hardly makes him a reliable witness, now, does it?”

 

Vera inspected the remains of Joan's tea and took a leisurely sip of the cold brew as she reflected on her feelings. “You know, Joan, I sometimes think that Will should have left you to die. After all, he had enough reason to and no-one would have criticised him for it. I’ve often wondered why I didn’t put you straight into General without any protection and just let nature take its course. That’s what Channing wanted.”

“I sometimes wished that you had. But that wasn't my destiny – nor yours. I am required to continue, for the greater good.”

“Destiny? How Noble! But not very noble if that means killing people along the way.” Vera was unprepared for Joan's cackle of caustic laughter.

 

“Who did I kill? People die all the time, Vera. They just disappear from life and in most cases, no one really cares. Did anyone care deeply about your mother?”

“Yeah but you don’t get to make the decision when they die, Joan – no one has that right.”

“Hypocrite! Do I really need to remind you that your mother didn’t die of natural causes?”

Vera's voice grew small. “No, no you don’t. But still, it wasn’t my right.”

“Just like you didn’t have the right to send me to Sinclair. But you did it anyway.”

“That wasn’t my decision!” Vera defended hotly. “It’s what the Police Surgeon recommended. I had nothing to do with that.”

“No? You didn’t break your neck to tell them I was mad?” Joan mocked.

“I didn’t have to, Joan,” she replied acidly, “they could see just how fucking insane you were. Let’s face it, you lost it, Joan – your mind and your prison. And I don’t believe that you were any better when you came back to Wentworth as an inmate. You're probably still as mad as a hatter now!”

 

Joan's eyes narrowed and she pushed herself back into her seat with a look of disgust. “That would be after Westfall’s assessment of me, yes?”

“It’s got nothing to do with Bridget,” Vera said quickly.

“No, of course not, and you're a trained psychologist all of a sudden. You witter on about wrongdoing yet you conveniently ignore the blatant breaches of regulations - and the law - that she’s committed in her pursuit of Doyle. You're a hypocrite, Vera Bennett. And even more conveniently you seem to have forgotten that you sent Smith out to kill me…”

“No, that was never meant to happen! Smith lied to me. And Bridget didn’t maim or kill anyone.”

“Neither did I, Vera. But I obviously hurt you badly enough for you to want to believe all those things she told you. What does that say about you, I wonder?” Cradling her damaged hand in her lap, Joan raised her eyebrows and shot Vera a smugly quizzical look.

 

Vera knew that it spoke volumes. It had almost killed her see how natural Bridget and Franky were together, she was so jealous of them when, at that same time, her relationship with Joan had appeared to be foundering. And after Doyle’s release, the risks they ran just to be together – Vera had so desperately wanted that sort of commitment from Joan… and she suddenly began to wonder if Bridget and Doyle _had_ been lovers from the very start, if Bridget hadn’t said all that stuff about being Joan's victim just to get her off the scent – she never had liked Joan. All that stuff about having the idea of an affair planted in her mind, didn’t Bridget do exactly that to her? It was Bridget after all, who had first called Joan a psychopath. She’d been quick enough to withdraw her resignation once Joan had been committed, and quick enough too to play on Vera's guilty relief in order to get her job back. And when Joan was in Protective Isolation - in fact, all the way through her Remand period - Vera had been only too eager to agree with Bridget that Joan was twisted and sick. It had suited her to see Joan clinically diagnosed as a monster.

 

But what if she was wrong to trust Bridget, what if Bridget really _had_ played her to save Doyle’s skin? What if there was the slim chance that Joan was innocent? – And didn’t a perverse part of her wish that were true? Maybe Smith put a contract out on her husband, maybe Proctor had killed him for Smith’s approval? No, she reasoned, the hit was more likely… But what about Fletch? Doyle hated him … but enough to have him murdered? Was that how Smith found her hitman? It seemed mad, but wasn’t Doyle back in Wentworth on a murder charge for shooting a man and blaming Joan? Fuck! She couldn’t think! Fuck! Fuck it all!

 

“When you asserted that I’d never cared for you I didn’t know what to do. It hurt. It still hurts. I had such high hopes for us, Vera, I really did – even higher for you…”

“You honestly expect me to believe you’re still hurting about us? That you ever did?” Vera laughed hollowly. “You dumped me, remember?” That awful day would forever be etched in her memory. But she’d held onto her anger, for once, using it against her attacker instead of turning it inwards on herself – yet she still wasn’t sure if it had been a blessing in disguise. 

“And you papered my office with Jianna’s picture!” hissed Joan, the pain of that awful morning still twisting in her gut.

“It wasn’t me,” she sighed tiredly, “I never even knew her name until after…”

“After what? After you ousted me?”

“I didn’t oust you, Joan. I did what was right. I had serious concerns about your leadership so I took the only route I could, given that you refused to confide in me, to trust me.” A fierce righteousness filled her face and made Joan scowl. “And I’ll do it again if I have to…” she warned.

 

“You should have talked to me first. After all, that is the correct route for grievances.”

“I did and you dismissed them. So, I followed Departmental protocol – to the letter.”

“Because they weren’t _serious_ , Vera. Those misgivings didn’t really start to worry you until you thought that I didn’t care, did they? You were so hurt by the thought that I would have sacrificed you that anything I did from that point onwards that was even slightly imaginative or unprecedented was bad and wrong. I’m right aren’t I, Vera? And after it ended, well…” Joan shrugged in regret and gestured, palms upwards, as if to suggest that Vera had had no other option, “it was open season on me wasn’t it?”  

“But I found the rest of the pencils, they were missing one.”

 “What pencils, Vera?”

“The tin of drawing pencils in your desk drawer? The same sort as the one Spiteri used to blind herself?”

 

She was proud of her work with Spiteri. She had moulded the pathetic girl’s mind to her own design. She had owned her – and with that ownership had come a mutual streak of tenderness so sweet and dark that, even now, she wondered if she had deserved it…

Joan contrived to look mystified. “Pencils, pencils….” she mused. “Oh yes, I’d confiscated them from Smith. Although I can’t remember why now, or if they were all there or not. It doesn’t really matter now though does it? But don’t you see, Vera, that’s what I’m talking about - you had the instinct but you just didn’t have the faith.”

 

“Faith can only take you so far, Joan.”

“It’ll take you all the way if you let it, Vera.”

“Is that really what you believe, Joan? What if that faith’s misplaced? What if that faith gives you false hope? What then? Can you answer me that?”

“If that’s the case then I suppose that you end up where we are now, Vera. We were both wrong to hope.”


	6. Chapter 6

They stared at each other for long moments then Vera broke the spell. Looking down into her lap she pulled the hem of her t-shirt over her bare thighs and took a deep breath. “God! I can’t believe that I’m even saying this, Joan,” she said in a small voice, “but even after you dumped me, I still had this vague hope that you’d realise that you’d made a terrible mistake in letting me leave like that, and you would apologise and take me back.”

Joan raised an eyebrow and her soft lips parted to allow an interested ‘huh!’ to escape.

Vera's eyes narrowed. “Yeah. I know – you had nothing to apologise for, did you? Oh no, not the mighty Joan Ferguson! How could you ever make a mistake that you’d admit to, hey? Let alone feel the need to apologise? Well let me tell you something, Joan, you made plenty!”

“That may be true, Vera, but I only regret two things. Would you like to know what they are, hmmm?

“This should be good,” said Vera sitting forward in interest.

“OK, the first is that I ever thought that you could become a better person and the second is that Mr Fletcher didn’t die the first time around.”

 

“Then you did set him up!” exclaimed Vera in horror.

“I did no such thing, Vera. His accident was just that – an accident. That I’ve never cared for the man and that I think we’d all be better off without him has nothing to do with it, no matter how much you try to make it fit.”

“What happened to you, Joan? Did you kill Slater too?

Once more, Joan offered a look of incomprehension.  “Why would I do that? Is that what Smith told you? Or was it Doyle, hmmm? If you believe her version of events I stole some of that Pink Dragon heroin and then I gave Slater a ‘hot shot’.” Her tongue lingered on the ‘T’s and she eyed Vera with pity as the small woman coloured up. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, you know. Smith must have known why Slater killed herself, the method is irrelevant.”

“OK,” agreed Vera, “for arguments sake, let’s say that Slater did kill herself, but you have you admit that you changed after Smith escaped.”

 

“Vera,” said Joan sharply, “I was fighting for my career. You changed to improve your prospects, so why wouldn’t I adapt my approach to overcome adversity? When the World is against you, you must use every method at your disposal to maintain your status and advance your position. Whenever and wherever you can.”

“So, you decided to brainwash Spiteri, drug Smith, kill her husband. You tried to have Fletch killed, you hounded Will, and all the time you were fucking me in some of the kinkiest ways imaginable…” she paused, her indignation growing hotter as Joan smiled at her. “Is that how you deal with adversity?”

 

“As I’ve just explained, you use any means available. I may have bent a few rules but I believe that you are just as guilty of that as I am, no?” She paused to enjoy the flush of guilt on Vera's sulky face, “and as for fucking you, well, I don’t recall you having any complaints until, as I’ve said before, you thought that I’d lost interest in you. You got all emotional and you let your feelings influence your reasoning. We wouldn’t be here now in this, ah, uncomfortable situation if you hadn’t.”

“And where, exactly, would we be if I hadn’t, Joan? Tell me, I’d like to know.” Joan made an infuriating show of idly inspected the hem of her skirt and then turned her cool gaze back to Vera. “Would we be a couple?” she demanded. “Would I be able to show you love and have you accept it willingly?” Vera blushed hotly, “would you willingly show me yours? Are you even capable of expressing love? Do you honestly think that you could have found it in you to do that, or would I still be your puppet?”

 

“Pup-pet,” drawled Joan. “Someone needs to loosen your strings, Vera, Mr Stewart hasn’t made a particularly good job of it, has he hmmm? And whose puppet are you now, Vera? Channing’s, I suspect, although, of course, you’ll deny it. He may not be actually fucK-ing you, but he’s fucking you nonetheless.”

“Come on, Joan, answer me. If all of that shit hadn’t happened would we be a proper couple now?”

“I’m not going to speculate on what could have been, Vera.”

“No, come on, Joan, I’m interested.”  

“Do _you_ think that we would be? Given your narrow view of life?”

“You’d have made a good politician, Joan, you know that? Always deflecting, forever meeting a question with a question…”

 

A future with Vera? As their journey together had progressed, her creeping need for Vera had given flight to a number of pleasing scenarios where their lives were intimately entwined but now, after all that had happened, they only served to mock her. It was something that Joan had tried not to think about since their union had ended.

Dropping her face into her hands, she pushed her fingers through her heavy mane and lifted her face to Vera’s. “OK, then,” she said almost wearily. “You want my answer? Then you shall have it. Yes. Yes I do think that we would be a couple. If Smith hadn’t escaped then I think that we would be. I’d like to think that you would have broadened your outlook and would, by now, understand that whatever I do, I do it for the greater good of us all, but also, that there are things that I do just for myself, and for the ones I cherish. But it’s all just fantasy now, isn’t it, Vera? We can’t change events, we can’t unlearn what we know about each other. And apologies won’t remedy that.”

 

A wave of bitter melancholy washed over Vera as she reflected on what she’d lost.  Her thoughts were drawn back once more to the night of the awards ceremony, to her conversation with Maggie, about how it had been up to her to change and accept Joan if Joan were ever to permit her even a whisper of her love….  And Joan? Well Joan had made some noises about having feelings for her, but her showing them was always conditional on Vera making the grade. Even now, Joan's fantasy was based on Vera's acceptance of her twisted personality - it was all take and no give with Joan, she thought sadly. She’d given everything to Joan and it had changed her into someone she didn’t like much. Who would she be now if she’d surrendered totally? She suspected that Vera Bennett would have faded away to be replaced by a new, twisted version of herself, one whose desire for love and success would blind her to Joan's dark deeds and lead her into a moral limbo. Yet despite all of this, the thought of being Joan's partner, of being loved by this woman who was, regardless of her many heinous faults, quite frankly the most amazing person she had ever met, was darkly seductive – even in the midst of her pain and anger.

But she couldn’t let Joan see how much her admission affected her and Vera quickly dredged up all of her misgivings to screen her tender heart from Joan.

 

Glancing at the clock, Vera realised that they’d been going around in circles for more than an hour. It was futile trying to argue with Joan, she steadfastly refused to accept anything she was told and Vera was nearing the end of her tether. “I don’t care what you came here to say, Joan, I want you to leave. I don’t wish to associate with a murderer,” she added haughtily.

Joan smirked thinking of Jake's pedigree in that arena. “But Vera,” she explained with a condescending smile, “remember that you're a killer yourself. By your own reasoning, that makes us the same doesn’t it?”

Vera gritted her teeth, “You made me do that.”

“Did I?” Joan jeered, disbelief dripping from her words.

“You know you did. You were going to cut me loose. I was forced into it.”

“Just like you were forced into pushing Gambaro down the stairs?”

“I didn’t do that!” she wailed as Joan grinned malevolently.

“No?”

“No!”

“Couldn’t find the courage of your convictions?”

“Fuck off!” Vera pushed herself from her chair and crossed to the living room door. She paused at the threshold and turned back to Joan.

 

“That statement from Nils Jesper,” she asked slyly, the corners of Joan's eyes tightened a fraction at his name, “how do you explain that?”

“Pure fabrication. Obviously trying to protect his employer.” Joan gave a nonchalant shake of her head sending her ebony waves tumbling over her shoulder.

“Then why would he name you? How did he even know who you are?”

“He didn’t.”

“You're honestly trying to tell me that a man, who you never met before,” she spoke over Joan's automatic correction of her grammar, “who you’ve never met _before_ , signed a statement saying that you paid him to kill Fletch and Harry Smith, as well as smuggling him into the prison to attack Smith on the day of the hearing? Why would he do something like that to someone he doesn’t know?”

Joan shrugged, apparently mystified. “Money, a lighter sentence, an easier life inside… Take your pick.”

“Convenient that he’s dead though, isn’t it? No-one escapes from you, do they, Joan?” she added as an afterthought and disappeared through the door.

 

Her fists clenched themselves into balls as she fought down her jagged pain. She hated Nils for what he had made her do. And yet, ironically, it had been he whom had led her onto this path; all those years ago when her heart was still soft it had been he whom had encouraged her individuality. He was her first proper friend, the first to show her what acceptance really felt like… But he’d become weak. He’d welched on their deal. Tears filled her slitted eyes as she mourned his loss - her loss - but she didn’t mourn her lack of freedom.


	7. Chapter 7

The sunny kitchen seemed a world away from the claustrophobic confines of the lounge as Vera rested her palms on the smooth surface of her shiny new dining table and squeezed her eyes shut as she rocked forward on stiffened arms. Her whole body was taut with anger and frustration, tight bands of it crushed her chest, its wiry fingers working deep into the muscles of her shoulders, and she exhaled loudly as she tried to flush out the poison. Her mind was by turns numbed and sparking with fractured images – none of which would stay still enough to pin down. What the fuck _was_ Joan doing here? To explain? To demand an explanation? To demand an apology? Certainly not to offer one, that was for sure!

 

It occurred to her that she could leave Joan where she was, get in the car and just fuck off – come back when Joan had grown tired of waiting. But, knowing Joan, she would sit there all day just to prove a point. She would probably still be there when Jake came home and who knew what tales she might tell him!

Vera hadn’t told him about her and Joan. She was ashamed to. He was the one good thing in her life and she couldn’t risk his ridicule. And even if he didn’t say it, she would know what he was thinking: how could anybody be stupid enough to get mixed up with Ferguson?!

But she’d also kept it secret for another reason; she wasn’t bisexual, she was straight. What she had done with Joan, with Maggie, and with that woman at the gym – that hadn’t been her – that had happened to someone else, someone who looked and sounded like her, but who was so far detached from whom Vera Bennett actually was that she was in essence, a complete stranger.

 

Silently, Joan appeared in the doorway. Her quick eyes assessed the layout of the dining room and galley kitchen, the décor in here too was conventionally mediocre. The dining table was the only thing that even vaguely approached a degree of stylishness, but that too failed to measure up (being as it was, a cheap commercial copy of a high-end design that Joan herself was considering as a replacement for the table she had trashed) and it suited Vera down to the ground, she thought smugly. Poor, dowdy Vera.

Dark eyes travelled up and down Vera's delicate frame - taking in the increased muscularity in her slender limbs, lingering with a detached interest over her tight buttocks and patch of brown fluff peeking from between pale thighs, sliding over the tangle of chestnut curls that glowed like fire in the morning sunlight - but they didn’t soften then burn as once they would have.

 

Vera started in shock as Joan's arm enfolded her and clamped her elbows to her side, yet - it felt almost welcome. She felt herself lifted and her hips pushed hard against the polished wood. Instantly, all those old feelings came flooding back and her clit hardened with each hot breath that stirred the fine wisps of hair on her neck. Joan fitted around her so perfectly and Vera was helpless against the sudden rush of liquefying heat that expanded in her belly and engulfed her with long buried need. She hated herself for wanting this, for needing something so perversely and hopelessly wrong, but something deep inside her rebelled against all sense and she felt herself give in, all the tension sliding away as she melted into Joan's hot body.

 

Joan pushed her cunt against Vera's skinny arse, feeling quick heat build, and the table skidded a little on the tiled floor with the force. Her fingers fluttered at the hem of Vera's t-shirt, sliding the tired fabric up her bare hip as they stroked small circles over velvety skin. “Have you missed this, Vera?” Joan's whisper was silken, barely audible, her gossamer words fading as they entered Vera's ear on a bed of hot breath as she bent them both forward until her bandaged arm supported the combined weight of their bodies. Feeling Vera soften against her, the familiar shape of her in her arms caused Joan a moment’s hesitation. She had convinced herself that she felt nothing for this traitor. Indeed, most of their jagged conversation this morning had only served to re-enforce that conviction but the slow throb between her legs threatened to derail her carefully cultivated belief. Bittersweet memories tugged at her emotions but they weren’t sweet enough to make her forget herself. “Have you?” she asked again.

 

Oh god! Missed was barely adequate to describe what she’d experienced! Grieved for was more appropriate. Yes, grief – because Joan had killed them; she’d been killing them from that very first night in her office… Summoning all of her courage and anger, Vera twisted in Joan's embrace. “Why are you here, Joan?” she groaned _._ Futilely she tried to push them both off the table as she wriggled and bucked in Joan's tightening grip, her muscles crying out with the strain, breath locked in her chest as she shoved with all of her might.

 

Joan hoisted Vera onto the balls of her feet and held her effortlessly against her. “I bet this is turning you on isn’t it, hmmm?” her voice was hot in Vera's ear, stirring the baby curls that clung to her flushed cheek. “You quite lost your taste for vanilla, didn’t you? I do hope that Jake is managing to satisfy your palate.” She could smell him on Vera's skin, tainting the gentle perfume that usually garlanded the curve of her neck. She strummed her fingertips over the taut material of Vera's thin T-shirt as her captive continued to squirm. “Look at this, Vera, still hot for me, aren’t you?” she taunted. Vera looked down at her swollen nipples straining against the fabric and she shuddered as Joan slid her leg against hers, her breath hitched at the sensation of hot inner thigh and cool leather boot slithering up her skin.  

 

“I am not ‘hot for you’, Joan,” hissed Vera between gritted teeth. “Why would I want to go backwards and fuck a woman who treated me so badly?”

“Strange then, that you should have spent so much time with me. You haunted me, Vera. First, so you tell me, at Sinclair, then in Protected Isolation. You can’t have been too keen on my move back into General but I imagine you kept tabs on me via CCTV, that is when you weren’t ogling me during those special strip searches.” Joan's fingers settled on Vera’s belly and gently traced the quivering swell, slowly mapping the subtle hollow above her pubic hair. “You must have been over the moon when you shoved me into Medical Isolation, the only problem there was that you couldn’t nominate yourself as my personal officer, could you? Did you watch on the monitor as the nursing staff washed and dressed me? Did you ever wish that you could trade places with them, hmm?

 

“Balls! If I’m haunting you, what the fuck are you doing here?!”

 

“You must have heard the gossip, Vera,” she whispered hotly, ignoring her outburst, “they were all calling you ‘Freaklover’, and who could blame them? You weren’t very discreet. What was it, exactly, that you hoped to convey at those times? What did you get out of it?”

“I was making sure that you weren’t a danger to others…or yourself,” she croaked.

Joan slid her hand to Vera's outer thigh and insinuated it underneath her t-shirt, cool fingertips making their way to the crest of her hip. “Perhaps, then, you should have fed me those anti-psychotics personally, to calm me down. You knew that I was spitting them, so why didn’t you tell Westfall, I wonder? After all, she was your only friend inside the prison, but,” Joan paused and moved her lips to Vera's other ear, “not so much outside it though, hmmm? Too busy with Doyle I expect to spare time for a lonely spinster. You know that she used you, Vera, and you let her,” she stated flatly.

“Well, after how you treated me I should have been used to it, shouldn’t I?”

“I told you, my primary concern was only ever to develop your talents and help you meet your full potential. I was so proud at how far you’d come and I had so much more to teach you if only you had been willing to learn.”

 

“I learned nothing from you, Joan.”

Joan gave an exasperated ‘tch!’ and her fingers dug into Vera's hip. “Of course you did. We wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t. You know what your problem is, Vera? Do you? – And I feel like I’m repeating myself again – you have the potential but you just don’t have the ambition to use it all; and that’s because you still don’t know who you are. As a person, I mean. I’d say that’s your greatest failing. You still can’t see where you fit in, where you belong, and so you try to blend in with everybody else. By hurting me, you only hurt yourself.”  Relaxing her hand, she stroked Vera's neat waist, “have you ever put that blue dress on and remembered how powerful you felt in it? People wanted to know who you were. What do you think they wonder about you now, hmmm? I’ll tell you - they’re wondering how long it will take you to lose your job after having your ill-gained crowns taken away.” Joan withdrew her hand and stroked Vera's hot cheek, “I told you that I’d be coming for them…”

 

Vera felt like she would explode. The muscles in her jaw ached as she literally bit down on her anger and tried to find something in her arsenal that might make Joan stop. She settled on spite. Yeah, she could do spite well – she’d had an expert to learn from.

 

“Did you treat Jianna like me, Joan?  Did you hurt her too? You know, to train her up? Or wasn’t she into it?” Joan's arm tightened around her and she had difficulty drawing breath. “I bet you made her feel special at first though, just like me,” she gasped.

“Jianna was nothing like you, Vera. Don’t even try to compare yourself to her…” Joan's eyes closed and, with a twitch of her dark head, she made special effort to calm herself. A large part of her suddenly wanted to throttle Vera, to slap her to the ground and grind out her miserable existence. It was a primal urge that she had worked hard to eliminate because it was too unpredictable a force in her ordered life. The surge of momentous pleasure yielding to this desire of hers would afford (but alas, all too briefly) was hardly worth the inevitable consequences. She was meant to be starting afresh - tabula rasa - any hint of a mis-deed would dredge up the past, give her enemies their satisfaction in knowing that they had been right about her all along. Plus, her precious job would be in jeopardy before she even set foot back in her office – and that was something that she simply could not permit to happen again. She released Vera and stepped back, willing her hands to hang loosely at her sides.

 

“Did you love her?” asked Vera nastily as she turned around. Joan looked as if she might, just possibly, want to cry. A small muscle twitched in her cheek and her eyes grew blacker as they flickered over Vera's sneering face.

“Yes. I loved her deeply.”

The answer was so bald, so honest that Vera felt a sudden and helpless flush of guilty embarrassment. “But she was a prisoner,” she said in disbelief and sagged against the table’s edge, her rage subsiding into a dull anger.

“Yes. What of it?”

“I, I just can’t imagine you risking your career like that.”

“It was a different time, Vera. I was a different person. Much different.”

“Oh, really? Is that why Bryant’s face looks like it does?

All trace of softness left Joan's voice, “Bryant needed to learn her place.”

 

Vera shuddered inwardly at Joan’s lack of remorse. “Is that why you're here, to teach me my place? Are you going bash me too? Perhaps subject me to a little light torture?” she cocked her head and stared insolently at her uninvited guest.

 

“No, Vera, that’s not my intention at all,” said Joan softly, “in actual fact I wanted to negotiate a new start between us. That’s why I visited you today. To draw a line under what’s gone before and try to find a way of moving forward without either one of us having to look over our shoulder. I thought that we could discuss new terms of reference, as it were.”

Joan's pink tongue darted out and wet her lower lip; she’d given this a lot of thought: at the risk of losing face, she had to make Vera feel that she had gained something at the end of all this; she must feel that she could once more prove herself - prove her worth – on a level playing field, but to do that, Joan knew that she would have to tread carefully. If she failed to create even the thinnest veneer of trust then, what would start out as merely a difficult situation would inevitably escalate into another (unequal) battle of wits.

“Vera, I wanted you to understand that I know that, for whatever reason, neither of us got it right, but that doesn’t mean that we should continue to be punished. We can’t go back to what we once were, I don’t think that either of us would want that again, but we can co-exist without too much friction, can’t we?” She adopted a deferential pose and gazed hopefully at Vera, “whaddya say, Vera? Truce?”

 

Vera was totally flabbergasted. She knew that her mouth was working but her stunned brain was having trouble creating single words from the babbling shock filling her head. “Friction?” she managed at last. “You fucking what? Of course there’s going to be fucking _friction_! I know you Joan, I know you well enough not to trust you or any fucking truce you might offer! You don’t negotiate, you stipulate!” Vera span around, raising her hands as she addressed the empty kitchen: “and why couldn’t you have said this when you first got here?” She crossed to the counter and leaned against it, the marble top cold against her back, fingers curling tightly around the lip as she stared at Joan in astonishment. She felt the return of her rage as a metallic tasting lump grew in her throat.

 

“What did you hope to gain with all your fancy words and accusations, eh? What? You, you thought that telling me off would solve the problem? That I would be forced to agree with you? You thought that by laying yourself bare I would see how you’d only tried to do your best? Did you _really_ think that would work? Of course it fucking wasn’t going to! Why would it? –  you're a bad person, Joan! And do you really think that sexually assaulting me was going to further your cause? Did you think that I’d forget everything and just melt into your arms, hey? Just like that? When I know damn well that it’s all lies? Hey?  All of it, LIES!!” she shouted. “Truce??” she laughed shrilly. “You're asking for a truce? I don’t think so, Joan,” she said, coldly recovering her composure, “get out of my house. I’ve had more than enough of you, so just, just… piss off!”

 

Joan's eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest, it was just like Vera to make an irrational decision when it came to planning the rest of her life she thought uncharitably, this was a prime example of why she’d felt the need to come here today. “Just remember, Vera, that this was your choice. I won’t be taking any prisoners when I get back, any infringement and you're out – you have been warned.” She checked her watch and stared evenly into Vera's burning eyes, allowing her a minute to reconsider her rash outburst.

 

“So, is that your final answer?” she pursed her lips and mentally ran down her list of next moves as Vera turned and silently gestured towards the front door, “OK, Vera,” she sighed regretfully, “have it your way.”

 

Oh, thank god it was over!  Vera sagged with relief as Joan sauntered down the hall. She was exhausted, her body seemingly held together by the tense wires that still threaded her muscles. She felt tears prick behind her eyes as her shattered mind succumbed to the flood of emotions this morning had unleashed: anger, loss, regret, hurt, confusion … and lust - the unwelcome knowledge that Joan still had a physical effect on her made her shudder. Vera’s pride swelled a little knowing that at least she hadn’t weakened and given in to that! It gave her a moment’s respite from her misery and she felt a flicker of self-respect assert itself.  Stop it, Bennett! she reprimanded, keep it together, you’ve still got to get her out of the house.

 

In a dream-like trance she followed Joan to the lounge and watched gratefully as the deplorable woman belted her mac and settled the strap of her bag over her broad shoulder.

“You don’t need to show me out, Vera, I know the way.”

“No, I think I do, Joan.”

“As you wish…” Joan's full lips twisted in a wry smile and she moved fluidly towards the door. Her dark eyes held Vera's hard, blue stare until she stepped into the hallway but the smile never left her mouth.

 

Vera refused to look at Joan as she opened the front door and stood expectantly, arms crossed.

“Well, à bientôt, Vera,” said Joan pleasantly as she sashayed out into the bright sunshine. Vera had no idea what this morning’s display of stubbornness had cost her, but she would find out when Joan got back to Wentworth…

 

*****

 

Jake faltered mid-stride as he saw Joan emerge from the house, all thought of his misplaced keys vanishing as he spied Vera ushering her out. “The fuck are you doing here?” he demanded with nervous irritation as he reached the doorstep.

“Ah, MisTer StewarT.” Joan’s eyes crinkled in the facsimile of an amicable grin. “Just a friendly visit. Isn’t that right, Vera?” she said, turning to smile down at Vera.

Vera coloured up. “Friendly??” she snorted.

“Why are you here, Joan? What do you want?” Jake looked to Vera for an explanation, frowning worriedly as she evaded his eyes.

Joan couldn’t resist. “Maybe I’ve come for that ‘Good Hard FucK’ that you were talking about.” She cocked her head. “What do you say, JaKe?” Jake swallowed as Joan's gaze flickered between he and Vera. “But who’s going to be the one to give it to me, hhmmm?” she wondered idly.

“Jake..?” bleated Vera.

“Oh, didn’t you know, Vera?” Joan laid a conspiratorial hand on Vera's arm and leaned into her, “Mister Stewart here is quite the sexual adventurer. Just ask Nurse Radcliffe,” her lips twitched in pleasure as Vera's became thinner than a piece of string. “Or Mr Jackson,” she paused as Vera's eyes widened in horrified disbelief. “Just as well you have to use protection, Vera...” she left her words hanging in the fraught air and smiled innocently as she straightened up.

 

Vera's mouth hung open in shock. “Jake? Tell me it’s not true...” she smiled at him weakly, willing him to deny it.

Stewart squared his shoulders and glared at Joan. “It’s not true, Vera. She’s lying. The vicious bitch is just stirring again.”

“Oh, Jake, be a man. Try to find enough respect for her to tell her the truth.” Joan goaded.

“Shut up, Joan!” Vera snapped. “Jake, tell me it’s not _true_!” her face fell when she saw sweat begin to bead his hairline. He was lying to her! “When, when did you fuck them?” she demanded in a cracked whisper.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much, Vera. Mr Jackson soon lost interest once young Jake here dropped him in the shit over the drug test.” She turned to Jake and picked a piece of unseen lint from his pullover. “Managed to persuade the nurse to falsify _your_ results though, didn’t you, Jake?” she brought two fingers to her lips and adopted a thoughtful pose, “as for Nurse Radcliffe, well, what was it Arnold Swarznegger once said? ‘Eating’s not cheating’? Now, that may have been true of their early encounters but I’m sorry to report that our naughty nursey and young Mr Stewart here graduated to full carnal knowledge in a very, very short space of time.” She smiled knowingly at Vera, relishing the pain that filled her watery eyes, then faced Stewart, the same smirk twisting her carmine lips.

 

Jake shot Joan a look of pure venom. “Vera,” he croaked, “Vera, she’s lying. I swear,” he licked his lips nervously and tried to steady his voice. “Yeah, sure, I tried it on in the first week but she knocked me back!”

“Oh, OK. So, so what? I’m second prize, is that what I’m meant to take from that?”

“No, Vera, of course it isn’t!” pleaded Jake. “Radcliffe is just a bit of fluff but you, you… you’re the kind of woman that makes a man think about settling down forever.”

Joan gave an involuntary snort and cackled in derision as she pushed past him. “Ooh, that’s funny, Jake, tell her another one!” she called over her shoulder as she headed for her big black car.

 

Checkmate, Vera, she chuckled maliciously to herself as she opened the gleaming door and turned for one last look at the suddenly not so happy couple.  Oh, dear – it looked as if Vera had locked young Jakey out of the house. With a wide smile of satisfaction creasing her face, Joan waved gaily at the stricken man and slipped behind the wheel. Checking her watch, she put the car in gear, and wondered how long it would take Vera to calm down and realise what a mistake she’d made in turning her offer down, or how long it would take her to admit that Joan had just done her a favour in cleansing her life of Jake Stewart. Pulling smoothly from the kerb it occurred to her that if she put her foot down she’d be able to catch the house cleaner before she left for the day … there were a couple of points she wanted to address with her.


End file.
